Douglas Kearney

Poet, librettist, and performer Douglas Kearney has published seven books, including the National Book Award finalist Sho (Wave Books, 2021) and Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and a Silver Medal in Poetry from the California Book Awards. The 2021 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, Kearney has had four operas staged, most recently Sweet Land, which was named Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America. He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Altadena, CA, Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and lives in St. Paul with his family.